Samsung Galaxy J6 re-evaluation: A no-frills, budget smartphone

Before Xiaomi, Motorola and a few others sold feature-packed smartphones offering tons of features, Samsung used to dominate the budget-midrange smartphone market. Their Grand series of Android smartphones offered the best one could expect from a phone at that price point.

However, post the Xiaomi-Motorola era, Samsung relies on their J series smartphone to stay relevant in this segment. Riding high on its brand value and a sturdy after sales, Samsung kept dominating the charts with its J series until Xiaomi overtook them with their Redmi series last year and has been leading since then.

Display:
Similar to other midrange Android smartphones, the Galaxy J6 sports an 18:9 display measuring 5.6-inches. Unlike the competition, it utilises Samsung’s acclaimed Super AMOLED display, which is known for rendering inky blacks and vibrant colours. However, it only renders images at a resolution of 720 x 1480 pixels with a pixel density of 294 ppi — this is comparatively inferior to what the competition offers. Samsung also doesn't mention any glass protection — we noticed the J6 picking up minor scuffs and scratches while using it as our daily driver.

Performance:
The J6 relies on Samsung’s home-brewed Exynos chipset, particularly the Exynos 7870. This is a two-year-old chipset with eight A53 cores and a single core Mali-T830 MP1 GPU. Samsung offers the J6 with either 3GB or 4GB of RAM. Samsung Experience 9.0 based on Android 8.0 looks after the daily chores. At first glance, the J6 doesn’t seem to aim for performance, considering the internals.

The 7870 chip wasn’t exactly a performance powerhouse when it was introduced in 2016. Additionally, Samsung still doesn't offer the latest build of Oreo (Android 8.1.1), offering the slightly older Android 8.0. Despite that, Samsung has optimised its software for the chipset, trimming down unnecessary stuff here and there. As a result, the J6 feels eager right out-of-the-box. There’s negligible stutter or delay while browsing through the interface. However, when the J6 is put under some stress, the old chipset begins to show signs of its age — it lags occasionally, bringing back the classic Samsung midrange performance issues that the phones of yesteryears suffered from. Heavy titles such as Dead Trigger 2 and PUBG will run on the lowest settings, albeit with noticeable frame drops. In short, this isn't a smartphone for performance enthusiasts.

Camera:
Over the past few years, Samsung has earned a name for itself with the camera performance in the midrange segment. The J6 sits at the lower side of the midrange segment and manages to offer decent camera performance considering its price. There’s a 13MP rear shooter with an aperture of f/1.9 and an LED flash. The images can at best be described as decent in daylight scenarios — the pictures are clear with vibrant colours and contrast. Low light performance isn’t impressive as the camera tends to underexpose the image and loses out on details as well. The camera also struggles with the autofocus system in low-light conditions. The camera app offers AI-based stickers like you find on Snapchat and Instagram. You also get a dedicated Night Mode that stitches four shots simultaneously in varying exposures and fusing them together to get the perfect shot.

Battery:
With a 3000mAh battery, the Galaxy J6 manages to deliver around a day’s power on a single refill with a fair amount of texting, doing hour-long sessions on YouTube, streaming audio from the Internet and snapping selfies. There’s no fast charging though, which is why